Nixon’s The One
I watched an old Saturday Night Live sketch, from the first season at the nadir of Nixon’s popularity. Dan Ackroyd slightly awkwardly played Nixon, the mustache sticking out. The person I was watching it with largely jeered at this sketch, not being terribly interested in American political history, preferring the theatrical performance that was a bizarre Frankenstein bit, something that would either not be done today in a more tight-knipped and conservative risk-averse Saturday Night Live, or if done would come across as “The Big Ear Family”. I should probably have compared Nixon with Hamlet to give her viewing a bit of perspective. Well, probably not Hamlet… I’d have to reconsult my Shakespeare to find a proper protagonist, “I read two Shakespeares“.
The Nixon sketch seemed to want to stuff in every then-just-exposed into the popular consciousness psychological dementia and surrounding aura. If that sentence makes any sense. Thus it is Nixon talking with the portraits of Lincoln, and FDR, and Kennedy. Thus it is Nixon telling Kissinger to kneel down and pray, all the while berating him for being a Jew. The awkward line came in with Kissinger running out saying he had to order everyone to ignore any directive from Nixon regarding use of nuclear weapons, something that came across as tacked on.
Nonetheless, it was an interesting little snippet, and the overdone nature really only added to its peculiar place today as a Museum Piece of cultural history. The nation was putting the finishing touches on its definition for the word “Nixonian”. What is it Nixonian, you ask?
Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!†He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.â€Â
Indeed.